The Job Hunt

If you didn’t believe in a thing called luck, come to US and hunt for a part-time on-campus job. How long does it take to find one? Well, there is no definite answer to that. The first door you knock could present you with a job. On the other hand, you could roam around the campus for the entire semester and yet be without one!

Your qualifications and resume do not matter much in this hunt. At some help-desk jobs, the qualifications on your resume work against you. They need people with little technical background who would never leave for another better job. All Said, the process is exciting and the stories I’ve heard last month or so are super-thrilling.

My job hunt story has many twists and turns. Two days after landing in US, I had the opportunity of an interview in a Classic Japanese restaurant. That person even offered me a job with an astronomical sum of money which could have paid for half of my MS studies. For a moment, I was tempted. Tempted to work for an illegal job; tempted for the money; tempted to put work ahead of my studies. After eating the only 2 vegetarian items on the menu, I ended up rejecting the job.

In the next few days, some lucky people got jobs. If you get a job very early in job hunt, you should either be super lucky or super desperate for a job. You are travelling in a bus and start a conversation with the person next to you and he ends up giving you a job opportunity, this is how lucky can you get. There are some others who have roamed all the buildings in the campus all month long without getting one! Wait a second, you can be luckier that this too! The person who arranges your temporary accommodation could refer you for a job that would save you half your tuition fees. In some odd cases, the seniors you stay with would treat you as alien and not even let you use the kitchen utensils. Luck as they call it. Then there are some dumb people. One guy forgot his bag in some department. After an hour or so, he realized that. On the way back, someone asked him are you looking for a Graduate Assistantship (GA). That idiot said; no I’m looking for a bag.

One fine day, one of my friends calls me up and says there is a GA position which requires VB experience, you should apply. I didn’t know VB, yet there was no harm in giving a try. I walked all across the campus to reach the building where the job was to submit my resume. Fun part, the lady who read my resume tells me there is no VB on this resume. I don’t know what to say. I walk in for a VB job without VB on my resume! I end up telling her that I’ve done things more important than VB and there’s no space to fit in VB experience. I still can’t believe how she took that reply. Ten minutes later, two of my friends walk in the same fashion, say the same thing and that lady drove them away!

A simple estimate of the replies to the job positions, if you apply to 200 job positions, you end up getting reply from about 10 of them. 5 of those say sorry, we don’t have a job, 3 of them say we don’t have a job currently, 1 says we are considering your case and 1 actually calls you for an interview. My bad luck was so bad that I got an Interview for the VB job out of all that I applied. I read an email at 11 in the night saying that you have an interview at 11 next morning, we will ask questions about Visual Basic and databases.

This was a nothing to lose opportunity. If I didn’t get the job, I would end up learning VB and adding something to my resume. I slogged all night, reading some stupid internet forum about VB and went for the interview where I realized that I was fielded against 3 other computer science people on their ‘Home turf’. Despite that, I feel that I did well. I can say that because I got an email saying that I got a half-time GA position and that implied that 25% of my tuition fees are waived of and I end up having 1000 dollars a month. This joy however was short lasting and in the next 15 minutes, I got another email saying we currently are filling only one position, so we cannot offer you the job. In 15 minutes, I was dreaming about the things to do with 1000 dollars and now walking on the ‘Boulevard of broken dreams’.

In the meanwhile, one of us came to know about a sure shot job opportunity. 2 people wanted that job. To decide who gets it, we held an event called as 'The Coin-toss'. A job was at stake and 10 people were watching as someone was about to get lucky on the flip of the coin. Eventually, it turned out that some other guy went on to get the job.

An email was circulated in most university departments regarding a c# job opportunity. I had funnily replied to that email saying that I have a 3 year work experience in C# and many projects when I had none. I got an email from them saying to give them a 10 minutes ppt about the projects and work I handled in C#. It is funny, but I made up a 10 minutes ppt adding all the crap projects that I had done and stating that I had used C# for it. I decorated some slides with the photos of databases from my BE project, a piece of shit which I hoped would never help anyone ever!


The presentation was nice according to me and I went quite close to getting that job too which eventually went to a Chinese cs guy. In the next few days, I came close to getting a job in crazy departments far different than the thing that I am here to study for. I came really really close to getting a job at Agricultural Department, A photographer’s job, A job at the Food and Nutrition Department, A job of straightening wires at Mechanical department. The people in the US raise your hopes a lot. You cannot be sure of a job until you see your name on the pay roll, no matter how close you think you are. In one case, someone was told to come the next day to discuss salary issues and when she went in the next day, she was informed that the position is already filled.

All said, I finally have a job in Civil Engineering department. It doesn’t pay much, but I’m happy that I like what I’m doing. I wish good luck to others who are still finding on-campus jobs in US.